With the seating of young children in a vehicle, they need to be supported in an upright or semi-upright position, which can be called a sitting position whilst awake, but as children need to sleep, and frequently fall asleep easily in a motor vehicle, there is a need for the children to be supported in a reclining or semi-reclining position when they are sleeping.
Also during this period of time both in the upright and reclining position, the children should be securely restrained in the vehicle for safety purposes. Australian Patent No. 476021 in the name of the present applicant is directed to one form of child seat structure for attachment to motor vehicle seats, the structure comprising a support frame having a back part and a base part, a seat frame having a back rest portion hinged to a seating portion and the seat frame being moveable forwardly and downwardly in relation to the support frame, latch means between the seat frame and the support frame to hold the seat frame in an upright position, and means guiding the back rest portion of the seat frame on the back part of the support frame, whereby when the seat frame is moved forwardly and downwardly, said seat frame is moved from a substantially upright sitting position to a reclining position.
Assuming that this seat is in the reclining or comfortable seating position, in order to move the seat from the reclining position to the sitting position, one must firstly lift the higher point of the back rest portion and when the seat is in the intermediate position push the seat portion back towards the back rest frame so that the seat is then in the sitting position. In order to move the seat from the upright position to the reclined position, one must move the front of the seat portion forward to an intermediate position, then hold the hard point of the back rest portion and lower the seat portion so that the back rest portion moves to the reclined position.
While this is satisfactory, it is necessary to use both hands in order to move the seat, and this could be rather inconvenient especially when a child is in the seat.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an improved child car seat where the seat can be usually moved from one position to the other, and without requiring additional latch means to securely retain the seat in either of its two positions.